More cute than romantic, this love story should appeal to young teens.
A businessman’s psychotically jealous ex-girlfriend threatens a tender relationship.
A catastrophic accident, the result of a derailed train, leaves Jake McAllister, only a young boy, fatherless. He’s haunted by nightmares of the accident until a beautiful girl shows up in his dreams and offers him the comfort he desperately needs. Years later, Jake grows up to be a wealthy businessman but becomes caught in a loveless relationship with heartless gold digger Elizabeth Carstairs. For baffling reasons, Jake is incapable of seeing the full depth of her depravity but also seems dimly aware of his lack of romantic enthusiasm for her. Meanwhile, in a parallel plotline, Yvette Corvell suffers a deep loss when her husband dies in a tragic car accident. She uses the insurance settlement money to buy a ranch in Arizona and start a new life with her daughter, nearly 5-year-old Brandi. One day a tire bursts on Yvette’s car, and she is serendipitously rescued by Jake. He soon realizes that Yvette is a dead ringer for the girl who starred in his youthful dreams. Once she is convinced Jake’s womanizing days are behind him, the two begin a relationship and fall deeply in love. But Elizabeth, bankrupt from maniacally profligate spending, refuses to let Jake go without a fight. While some edge is given to the story by Elizabeth’s chilling amorality, this is otherwise so sentimental a story it seems written for very young adults. Debut author O’Donnell is irresistibly drawn to ostentatious displays of treacly emotion. Brandi wonders out loud to a dinner table of adults if her mother plans to find her a new father soon: “Since she got me a new fish, can she get me a new daddy?” The plot’s pace happily quickens when Elizabeth starts scheming to destroy Yvette. The author turns out to be extremely adept at inventively capturing Elizabeth’s fathomless wickedness. The prose can be a bit simplistic and is hampered by punctuation errors (for example, “Robert Johnson, head of the land acquisition department said”). The book is impossibly precious, which is simultaneously its principal virtue and central vice.
More cute than romantic, this love story should appeal to young teens.Pub Date: May 17, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4917-9629-0
Page Count: 306
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of...
Hoover’s (November 9, 2015, etc.) latest tackles the difficult subject of domestic violence with romantic tenderness and emotional heft.
At first glance, the couple is edgy but cute: Lily Bloom runs a flower shop for people who hate flowers; Ryle Kincaid is a surgeon who says he never wants to get married or have kids. They meet on a rooftop in Boston on the night Ryle loses a patient and Lily attends her abusive father’s funeral. The provocative opening takes a dark turn when Lily receives a warning about Ryle’s intentions from his sister, who becomes Lily’s employee and close friend. Lily swears she’ll never end up in another abusive home, but when Ryle starts to show all the same warning signs that her mother ignored, Lily learns just how hard it is to say goodbye. When Ryle is not in the throes of a jealous rage, his redeeming qualities return, and Lily can justify his behavior: “I think we needed what happened on the stairwell to happen so that I would know his past and we’d be able to work on it together,” she tells herself. Lily marries Ryle hoping the good will outweigh the bad, and the mother-daughter dynamics evolve beautifully as Lily reflects on her childhood with fresh eyes. Diary entries fancifully addressed to TV host Ellen DeGeneres serve as flashbacks to Lily’s teenage years, when she met her first love, Atlas Corrigan, a homeless boy she found squatting in a neighbor’s house. When Atlas turns up in Boston, now a successful chef, he begs Lily to leave Ryle. Despite the better option right in front of her, an unexpected complication forces Lily to cut ties with Atlas, confront Ryle, and try to end the cycle of abuse before it’s too late. The relationships are portrayed with compassion and honesty, and the author’s note at the end that explains Hoover’s personal connection to the subject matter is a must-read.
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of the survivors.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1036-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.
Eleven years ago, he broke her heart. But he doesn’t know why she never forgave him.
Toggling between past and present, two love stories unfold simultaneously. In the first, Macy Sorensen meets and falls in love with the boy next door, Elliot Petropoulos, in the closet of her dad’s vacation home, where they hide out to discuss their favorite books. In the second, Macy is working as a doctor and engaged to a single father, and she hasn’t spoken to Elliot since their breakup. But a chance encounter forces her to confront the truth: what happened to make Macy stop speaking to Elliot? Ultimately, they’re separated not by time or physical remoteness but by emotional distance—Elliot and Macy always kept their relationship casual because they went to different schools. And as a teen, Macy has more to worry about than which girl Elliot is taking to the prom. After losing her mother at a young age, Macy is navigating her teenage years without a female role model, relying on the time-stamped notes her mother left in her father’s care for guidance. In the present day, Macy’s father is dead as well. She throws herself into her work and rarely comes up for air, not even to plan her upcoming wedding. Since Macy is still living with her fiance while grappling with her feelings for Elliot, the flashbacks offer steamy moments, tender revelations, and sweetly awkward confessions while Macy makes peace with her past and decides her future.
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2801-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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